Rootless Lit: Eighty Days

I was put on to this book by Maria Popova of Brain Pickings, via her post, How To Pack Like Nellie Bly, Pioneering Journalist.


The book is Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World.

Credit: Barnes and Noble

The book is an account of two American women's race in 1889, to "girdle the earth" - one going east and the other west - with three objectives: 1) travel around the world in less than the "80 days" in Jules Verne's famous book about a man's round-the-world adventure; 2) do it faster than the other woman; and 3) sell newspapers for the World and Cosmopolitan.

In addition to the plot of the journey, Matthew Goodman puts the story in the context of the day, touching on topics such as: 

• discrimination against women
• racism
• ethnocentrism
• how the American railroad affected culture and enterprise
• "stunt" journalism
• working and living conditions of laborers in the U.S. and elsewhere

In re: discrimination, racism, and working/living conditions it is, at turns, inspiring and disheartening to compare the past with the present. 

Technologically, it's nothing short of amazing to consider how far the world has progressed in transportation, medicine, and communication in the span of 125 years. 


On women

I read Eighty Days just after re-reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. I don't remember the point at which I realized Mr. Asimov made virtually no reference to women, but it slowly came to me that in his future universe - notwithstanding all of the scientific advances over the thousands of years into the future he wrote about - it was a universe in which, with rare exception, only men figured in current events. And even in the unusual case where a girl or woman played an important role, Mr. Asimov assigned her with the usual, circumscribed boundaries for women: the use of her beauty or feminine charms to achieve her aims. Why couldn't an intelligent author like Mr. Asimov factor in the possibility that thousands of years hence, women might join the mainstream of history?

It was in this frustrated frame of mind that I read Eighty Days, not to be surprised by the many discriminations against women during the 1880s the author shares, but to consider how, in so many parts of the world today (including the U.S.) women are still denied self-determination. Said abilities to make one's own choices about getting married, getting divorced, becoming pregnant, giving birth, getting an education, how to dress, where one can walk, if one can drive, to whom one can speak, places one can enter, where to work, how to create, all restricted under the guise of religion, protection, "respect for women," or culture - thereby rationalizing the bars on the windows.



On time

Until I read Eighty Days, I had no idea that it was the railroad companies that established a standardized time in the U.S. Fascinating.


The originals

One of the disappointments I had in Eighty Days was the dearth of direct quotes from Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's books. You can find the originals here:  

• Nellie Bly: Around the World in Seventy-Two Days - audio - here or here.
• Nellie Bly: Around the World in Seventy-Two Days - online text - here
• Elizabeth Bisland: In Seven Stages: A Flying Trip Around the World - online text - here
• Elizabeth Bisland: In Seven Stages: A Flying Trip Around the World - downloadable to ebook

  
Of the two women, it seems that Ms. Bisland was more gracious and more positive in perspective than Ms. Bly, even though the latter was the far greater celebrity of the time. For example, where Ms. Bly saw cause for complaint, Ms. Bisland saw beauty and excitement.


For me, Eighty Days served as a reference for comparison between the world as it was only 125 years ago and how it is today, and for that, I appreciate Mr. Goodman's work.

I do still shake my head at Nellie Bly's decision to buy a macaque monkey in the middle of her journey, wondering "what was she thinking"?! And it's one of the loose ends Mr. Goodman leaves for the readers - what eventually happened to the mean creature, forced to go around the world in a small cage?

Rootless Lit: Call of the Wild

Credit: American Literature

Just finished re-reading Jack London's Call of the Wild on my Kindle. I downloaded 37 (!) works of Mr. London's. Free, you know.

Jack London: What I thought I knew

• Call of the Wild
• White Fang
• To Start a Fire
• Alcoholic
• Yukon
• Gold rush
• Wanderer

Jack London: What I didn't know

Prolific writer. Until I sought out White Fang and Call of the Wild for download to my Kindle, I didn't realize what a prodigious writer Mr. London was. More than 20 novels, more than 20 collections of short stories, a number of plays. A list here.   

Racism. I also had no idea of the grotesqueness of his racism (as evidenced in his novel, Adventure).

Maybe not alcoholic. There is some debate on this score.

Here's a comprehensive chronology of Mr. London's life.

Call of the Wild

Synopsis: Pampered dog in California sold into canine slavery during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897, taken up north to Yukon during gold rush times. Innocence, betrayal, brutality, indifference, acceptance, ignorance, greed, suffering, salvation, love, grief, transformation.

(Note: For packing list aficionados, here's a pack list of the typical "Stampeder" in the 1897 Yukon Gold Rush. Thanks to Adventure Learning Foundation, which strives to offer a "global classroom experience" through the prism of virtual, history-based expeditions.)

I first read Call of the Wild when I was in junior high school. The story of Buck, a St. Bernard-Scotch shepherd mix, gripped me as tightly yesterday as it did when I was a child.


It begins:

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost. 

Mr. London's writing style is economical, often accomplishing two goals with one word. For example, with just a few words, he can deliver a full-color visual and set a tone.

"Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness..." In only three words ( groping, Arctic, darkness), the reader gets a physical picture of men reaching for something in a cold and dark place; a sense of the men's mental state - seeking out, fear, hardship - and a concise definition of the story's stage.

His writing is uncomplicated. "These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs ...." I like this redundancy - want dogs/dogs wanted - clearly, these men would get what they wanted, and there was no doubt what was in store for the dogs. 

To tell a good story, Mr. London did indulge in some anthropomorphism of Buck and other dogs in the book, but with the exception of the "did not read the newspapers" bit at the beginning, he didn't go overboard. To a great extent, the reader never forgets Buck is a dog, driven mostly by instincts,  moderated by experiences. This seems to conform with Mr. London's naturalistic world view. Mr. London espoused social Darwinism (and had an interest in eugenics) and Mr. London stays true to his philosophy in how he depicts both humans and animals in Call of the Wild.


Which, sadly, brings me to Mr. London's racism. I recently read his book, Adventure, for the first time. From the very first paragraph, I was appalled at language such as this:

He was a very sick white man. He rode pick-a-back on a woolly-headed, black-skinned savage .... the man-horse ...

Several pages later:

Stretched on the platform, side by side and crowded close, lay a score of blacks. That they were low in the order of human life was apparent at a glance. They were man-eaters. Their faces were asymmetrical, bestial; their bodies were ugly and ape-like.

And then:

With the automatic swiftness of a wild animal the black gathered himself to spring. The anger of a wild animal was in his eyes; but he saw the white man's hand dropping to the pistol in his belt. The spring was never made.


Later:

Seelee was more intelligent than the average of his kind, but his intelligence only emphasized the lowness of that kind. His eyes, close together and small, advertised cruelty and craftiness. ... His broken-fanged teeth ... As he talked or listened, he made grimaces like a monkey. .. 

Even though Mr. London is restrained in his anthropomorphism of Buck, the dog, in Call of the Wild, he does imbue him with certain  human attributes such as dignity, strong work ethic, love, sacrifice, and rage. 

Mr. London does the opposite in his book, Adventure, in his treatment of the Solomon Island slaves. He dehumanizes them. With few exceptions, Mr. London does not even award them names, whereas in the Call of the Wild, we learn a lot about Buck and a little about his canine colleagues, all of whom have names and distinct personalities. 

So while I loved Call of the Wild, I couldn't help contrasting Mr. London's respect for the intrinsic worth of the dogs versus the contempt he displayed for the Solomon Island men in Adventure. 
  

Best Travel Books of All Time?

Reading in Lalibela, Ethiopia.

My new Kindle + rootless frugality = demand for free travel books.

Alas, there aren't as many copyright-expired travel books as I'd have thought.


But here are several lists of best travel books, regardless of vintage:

The 86 Greatest Travel Books of All Time  in Longitude Books' ("Recommended Reading for Travelers") list from a 2007 Conde Nast article.

Ultimate Travel Library: Around the World in 80+ Books in National Geographic Traveler

The 100 Most Celebrated Travel Books of All Time at Worldhum, with links to a number of related lists.


Below are some free books that I gleaned from these lists:

Mark Twain: Innocents Abroad
Mark Twain: Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain: Roughing It
D.H. Lawrence: Sea and Sardinia
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton: South: The Story of Shackleton's 1914-1917 Expedition
Fridtjof Nansen: Farthest North Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship Fram 1893-1896, Vols I and II
Alexis de Toqueville: Democracy in America, Vols 1 and II
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark: Journals of Lewis and Clark
Tobias Smollet: Travels Through France and Italy
Herodutus: The History(ies), Vols I and II
Winston Churchill: The River War: An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan
'Sir John Mandeville': The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
Alexander William Kinglake: Eothen, or Traces of Travel Brought Home From the East
Sir Richard Francis Burton: First Footsteps in East Africa (Harar)


Over here at Gutenberg.org, is a plethora of free books on travel to download.  So it appears there are more free books for my Kindle than I originally thought. 

Reading in Tbilisi, Georgia

Rootless Lit: Siddhartha

Credit: Shambala Classics

Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse.

Sandy, a TLG colleague, read this book while we were in Georgia. Her description of the plot piqued my interest.

It's an easy read. Spare language. Straightforward in ideas.

The young man, Siddhartha, has a searching spirit, asking universal questions:

They knew everything, the Brahmans and their holy books, they knew everything, they had taken care of everything and of more than everything, the creation of the world, the origin of speech, of food, of inhaling, of exhaling, the arrangement of the senses, the acts of the gods, they knew infinitely much - but was it valuable to know all of this, not knowing that one and only thing, the most important thing, the solely important thing? 

... His father was to be admired, quiet and noble were his manners, pure his life, wise his words, delicate and noble thoughts lived behind its brow  but even he, who knew so much, did he live in blissfulness, did he have peace, was he not also just a searching man, a thirsty man? Did he not, again and again, have to drink from holy sources ... why did he, the irreproachable one, have to wash off sins every day, strive for a cleansing every day, over and over every day?

Was not Atman in him, did not the pristine source spring from his heart? It had to be found, the pristine source in own's own self, it had to be possessed! Everything else was searching, was a detour, was getting lost. 

Siddhartha left his comfortable circumstances at home to live the rootless life of an ascetic, met "the" Buddha (fka Siddhartha Gautama) along the way, slowly built a life rooted in attachments, discovered suffering, and .... [don't want to spoil the ending].


Mr. Hesse lets his Siddhartha express directly the ideas relating to how one's attachment to feelings, outcomes, and things do not bring peace and, indeed, can detract from it. His Siddhartha is also explicit about suffering and its relationship to understanding and compassion.

Mr. Hesse more indirectly reveals what Siddhartha doesn't see about himself - the arrogance and intolerance toward others that he possesses, a malady shared by many of us who are "enlightened" in some manner, whether it be by a certain theology, yoga, what to eat, how to travel, or otherwise live or think.

It's a good reminder that, as some say less elegantly than Mr. Hesse, "we're all bozos on the bus."

Rootless Lit: Woe to Live On

"Rootless lit" - Literature that speaks to travel, migration, displacement, exploration, discovery, transience, divesting of stuff, or portability. 

Rootless lit book review: Woe to Live On, by Daniel Woodrell.

Credit: Amazon

Summary from Publisher's Weekly: "... Narrator Jake Roedel is in his mid-teens when he joins the First Kansas Irregulars in 1861. During the next few years he sees, and commits, more than his share of Civil War atrocities. Most of the action takes place in Kansas and Missouri between the rebel Irregulars (bushwhackers) and the Union Jayhawkers, with some civilians caught in the crossfire ..."


Never heard of Daniel Woodrell until I saw the excellent movie, Winter's Bone, and then read the book. I'm very glad to have made Mr. Woodrell's acquaintance, possibly the more so because I am a fellow Missourian.

Mr. Woodrell has a literary wit that I find very pleasing, particularly as it pertains to the sexual passages (npi). There are also the poetic ways Dutchy, the narrator, describes a man's departure from this earth. He has many opportunities to write such descriptions. 

Mr. Woodrell draws the reader's attention a number of times to just how young these wandering ronin are - so experienced in killing, but so inexperienced in other aspects of life.

It feels disconcerting to me that I've driven often over the Sni-A-Bar River bridge on Highway 50 without having any idea, until now, of Missouri's own "red terror" history from not so long ago.

Mr. Woodrell tells a good story that I think has relevance to us today, in an environment where there are those among us who wish to cast Americans against each other.

Rootless Lit: Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels

"Rootless lit" - Literature that speaks to travel, migration, displacement, exploration, discovery, transience, divesting of stuff, or portability. 

Rootless lit book review: The Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels, by Janet Soskice.

Credit: Amazon

Setting aside the story of the sisters for the moment, I loved how much I learned about things I didn't know existed before.

For example, I had no idea there was an ancient (and still active) Christian monastery in Egypt - St. Catherine's. Or that such a place had, since its inception, been the repository of historic manuscripts ... wow.

Or how about the existence of Jewish "genizah," a sort of cosmic recycling bin for sacred texts? Wow again.

Or palimpsests? Fascinating.

On the sisters Agnes and Margaret as people, I like the author's affectionate, but not blind, treatment of them; she includes their human frailties along with the glamorous stuff.

Ms. Soskice did a splendid job of describing the dog-eat-dog world of scholarly competition. And she did so without villainizing any of the players in the sisters' world.

Yet another layer of the story bespoke of women's power (or lack thereof) in England and Scotland during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Ms. Soskice is a good storyteller.

Rootless Lit: The Devil's Highway: A True Story

"Rootless lit" - Literature that speaks to travel, migration, displacement, exploration, discovery, transience, divesting of stuff, or portability. 

Rootless lit book review: The Devil's Highway: A True Story, by Luis Alberto Urrea

Credit: Amazon

This is the story of the desert passage undocumented immigrants make between Mexico and the U.S. Many die en route because of lack of water and the heat. More specifically, it is the story of the Yuma 14, when fourteen men from one group died in 2001.

There were parts of this book, especially at the end, where it was painful to read. Mr. Urrea described the final hours of the dead in vivid, personal detail. One description particularly stands out for its horrific sadness. A survivor reported: "One of the boys went crazy and started jumping up and down. He started screaming, 'Mama! Mama! I don't want to die!' He ran up to a big cactus and started smashing his face against it. I don't know what his name was." The boy was 16 years old.

About another who died, Mr. Urrea wrote: "Nobody knows the name of the man who took off all his clothes. It was madness, surely. He removed his slacks, folded them, and put them on the ground. Then he took off his underwear, laid it neatly on the pants. He removed his shirt and undershirt and squared them away with the pants. As if he didn't want to leave a mess. ...He lay on his back and stared into the sun until he died."

I like how Mr. Urrea spoke for the dead as they rode in their body bags in the air-conditioned hearses.

Mr. Urrea's description of the Border Patrol's activities seemed nuanced and even-handed to me. He offers thoughtful notes in the last chapter regarding the financial costs and benefits of undocumented immigrants, of other violences perpetrated in and around the desert border.

It's difficult to describe Mr. Urrea's writing style other than to say it is personal, often in second person narrative. His portrayal of almost all of the players in the undocumented migrant universe is empathetic. Exceptions are the drug gangsters and the coyotes they run, plus certain aspects of the Mexican government machine.

Whatever one's position on migration, this book forces the reader to acknowledge the immigrants' humanity. At least for a day or two.

Rootless Lit: The Warmth of Other Suns

"Rootless lit" - Literature that speaks to travel, migration, displacement, exploration, discovery, transience, divesting of stuff, or portability. 

Rootless lit book review: The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson.

Summary from Publisher's Weekly: "... Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Wilkerson's ... study of the     "great migration," the exodus of six million black Southerners out of the terror of Jim Crow to an "uncertain existence" in the North and Midwest."

Credit: Amazon

I thought I "knew" what it was like to be black in the American South before institutionalized segregation ended. I "knew" it was bad.

But as I moved through the book, I realized:

• Even though I had never articulated it to myself, I must have held the untested belief that black Americans had somehow acclimated to the reality of Jim Crow repression in the South.   
• As much as I thought I "knew" of atrocities such as lynching, mortal beatings, and being dragged behind vehicles til dead, there were even worse monstrosities.
• I knew nothing about the aggressive actions southern states took to keep black Americans from leaving.

Ms. Wilkerson tells the story of the Great Migration through the voices of three people who migrated north in three separate decades. Reading their stories, it really hit home that one never gets acclimated to daily humiliations, whether petty or grand. There is anger, bitterness, frustration, fear, despair - most of which could not be expressed during the Jim Crow years because the consequences of doing so might mean terrorism, brutalization, or death, for even the slightest infraction of the "rules."

I like how Ms. Wilkerson framed the Great Migration in the context of other migrations, such as the Eastern Europeans to the U.S. She made a good case for identifying the South as the Old Country and the North as the New World, noting differences in speech, customs, food, education, etc.

The author made the matter-of-fact and consistent choice of the word "escape" to describe what motivated, in full or in part, the immigrants' journey from the South. This kept the profundity of the Great Migration in front of me throughout the book.

She also used the phrase "caste system" to describe the realities in the South (and the North, as well). I found this helpful, too, because it made the point that even though the Great Migration was a story about black Americans, it wasn't "just" about race. The Great Migration was a universal story of people who fled from oppression and caste assignment and who sought better lives for themselves and their children.

I liked, too, that Ms. Wilkerson didn't sanctify or otherwise glamorize the three people she chose to tell their stories. They were ordinary, flawed individuals.

The Great Migration ended circa 1970. That is only yesterday, sociologically, and its effects continue to unfold.